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Sunday, May 2, 2010

A great big huge THANK YOU to each of you who participated in raising the first part of our adoption fees/home study costs! YOU have had a part in bringing our daughter home and WE are so very thankful. This is just the beginning of a very long journey yet watching the Lord provide JUST what we need when we need it is amazing. Nothing more, nothing less. His timing and His perfection. We are so thankful.

We had a yard sale over the weekend which brought in a fair amount of cash which is what sent us over on our fundraising. Glory to the King! It was amazing to watch people donate even if they didn't buy anything. We met so many adoptive families, adoptive relatives, and even a family who lives just around the corner from us! AMAZING! Little by little the Lord is providing but more then that He is providing a platform to share about adoption with others. Humbled by His grace and mercy as He provides. Watching the body of Christ come together to raise the ransom needed to bring our daughter home is such a beautiful thing. We are blessed beyond words. Here's a few pictures from that day.

Excited to see what He has planned next.

As of right now our home study is paid for, our first visit is Monday May 10th. All of the paperwork for that visit has been completed and we'll do our interviews with our sweet social worker. She'll take about 45-60 days to write our home study and during that time we'll begin raising funds for our dossier. Yes, its one thing after another!! In His timing the money will come in!

For now.....we have a mini goal to get us one step closer to dossier submission - our I-600a must be filed so we can even bring an orphan into the US. In the state of FL you are allowed to file this before your home study is complete. Since that is how we did it with Silas I plan to do the same thing here. One problem....there is an $830 filing fee. That's nothing right? The Lord just provided for initial fees and home study He can do this too! Besides we have a little head start with the overage from the sale!

Will you consider helping with this? If 83 people give $10 bucks we're done. Lets make it even quicker. If 42 people give $20 bucks its paid for. $20 bucks. That's not much in the grand scheme of giving a child a family. A family who will love her and cherish her for her entire life. Think about what you do with $20 bucks on a daily basis. Here's some examples.

Playing a part in placing a CHILD in her forever family. An investment of a lifetime.

A friend recently posted on her facebook about wanting to highlight FUNdraising families on her blog. I LOVE that idea. I plan to start that this week right here on my blog. I'd love to hear about YOUR FUNdraising and YOUR adoption! Every Friday we'll do FUNdraising Fridays and I'll choose a few families to highlight on my blog. Post a comment here sharing a bit about your blog/fundraising or email me at erica dot shubin @ gmail dot com with a little bit about you, your story, your fundraising and link to your blog. I'll post a few on my blog each week and see what God does to provide!

Not only that I was sharing with my friend how neat it would be to have something set up where adoptive families can be "sponsored" of sorts for a year while they are in the adoption process. With just 40 people paying $50 a month for a year an adoption would be paid for. How incredible is that to think about? The ransom paid by just 40 people committing to $50 a month for a year. I'm not sure how to organize that but it's blogs like Tracie Loux's that make me realize this is a very REAL possibility. Recently I shared on facebook about a family who was in an "emergency adoption" situation. Tracie posted an update recently on her blog about how the body of Christ rallied together to raise $14,500! Yes in ONE WEEK. 182 people participated in that FUNdraiser and 1/2 of the participants donated less then $30! If you think your donation won't make a difference because its "too small" think again! I would encourage everyone reading this post to go read Tracie's blog post right here. Tracie is a beautiful writer, a Jesus lover, and passionate about adoption. She is an encouragement to my soul and I'm thankful the Lord has allowed our lives to collide.